Australasia

Early map of Australia with the name Notasia which was sometimes used to identify the continent as being separate from Asia and prior to the acceptance of Flinders naming. The first writer in English to use the word “Australia” was Alexander Dalrymple in his “An Historical Collection of Voyages and Discoveries in the South Pacific Ocean“, published in 1771, but he used it to refer to the whole South Pacific region, not specifically to the Australian continent. In 1793 George Shaw and Sir James Smith published “Zoology and Botany of New Holland”, in which they wrote of “the vast island, or rather continent, of Australia, Australasia or New Holland.” The name Australia was popularised by the 1814 work , “A Voyage to Terra Australis”, by the navigator Matthew Flinder’s. Despite its title (which reflected the view of the Admiralty), he used the word “Australia” in the book, which was widely read and gave the term general currency. Governor Lachlan Macquarie of New South Wales subsequently used it in his dispatches to England. In 1817 he recommended that it be officially adopted. In 1824 the British Admiralty finally accepted that the continent should be known officially as Australia. 

From the London General Gazeteer.